Chicken Cock Flavored Whiskey, Reviewed by the Bon Appetit Foodist

Bon Appétit Restaurant and Drinks Editor Andrew Knowlton has a lot of bottles of booze in front of him. In this column he goes through them, one by one.

(Credit: Sam Dean)

As someone who’s a booze snob and a bourbon fan, I’m not supposed to like flavored whiskey. And I don’t. But as the whiskey market keeps growing, companies are starting to follow in vodka’s flavored footsteps, and someone out there keeps buying it.

In 2012, flavored whiskey sales grew five times faster than that of normal whiskeys, and the big brands are all rolling out at least one variety. Jim Beam has its Red Stag line, with Black Cherry, Honey Tea, and Spiced flavors, and Jack Daniels, Bushmill’s, Dewar’s, and Evan Williams all have honey-flavored bottles on the market. Then there’s your cinnamon-flavored Fireball whiskey, and the whole line of Southern Comforts (including “Lime”).

And then there is Chicken Cock. It’s only available in the South at the moment, and comes in Cinnamon, Root Beer, and Southern Spiced. To my tongue, they taste like raw whiskey, sugar, and a bunch of chemicals, but that’s a little like a movie critic saying Fast & Furious 6 is a dumb car movie with flimsy characters: Chicken Cock doesn’t care what I think, and I’m guessing it’ll do just fine without my endorsement.

Surprisingly, the Chicken Cock name wasn’t made up by some Dane Cook-inspired marketing team, but actually comes from a Kentucky bourbon that was made from 1856 up through the end of Prohibition (prompting the tagline: “Chicken Cock is back and more flavorful than ever!”). And to be honest, if someone had made a real bourbon with the name and played up the historical angle, it could have been a funny addition to serious drink lists around the country.

But as is, flavored and bottled in an “aluminum quick chill bottle” that the company claims gets cold faster for “chilled shots,” the target demographic would seem to be frat bros and the girls who love them (or at least put up with them). I’d probably recommend sticking to normal bourbon, but hey, it’s their 20 bucks, and if they feel like buying some Chicken Cock, I don’t think anything’s gonna stop them.